Ben Younger: Gets Prime Inspiration From His Own Life

Eight years ago, even before he wrote and directed Boiler Room, his tense little
coming-of-age drama about unethical stock brokerage, Ben Younger had this idea
for a comedy.

"My mother’s a psycho-therapist," he says. "And my girlfriend,
at the time, was in therapy. I thought, `What would happen if she turned out to
be my mother’s patient, and she didn’t know it?’"

Prime is the movie that came from that. Younger, 32, made his second feature film
about an older woman (Uma Thurman) rebounding from a divorce with a younger man
(Bryan Greenburg) whose mom (Meryl Streep) turns out to be the woman’s therapist.

"In New York, this must have happened," Younger says.

Working his way through the moral and ethical concerns of such a relationship
was tricky. But Younger knew he could get away with it when he landed his dream
cast – Streep and Thurman. And the scene in which the psychiatrist-mom tells
the girlfriend-patient that the man the girlfriend has been baring her soul about
– sparing no sexual detail – is the shrink’s son, is where that
casting paid off. The two actresses flash through moments of embarrassment, dismay,
anger, humiliation and revelation in just a minute or so of screen time.

The movie’s reviews haven’t exactly sung (Variety used words like "underwritten"
and "mediocrity" to vicious effect). But everybody is noting "Streep
and Thurman’s obvious enjoyment in playing off each other" (Variety
as well).

Here’s how the big scene came about.

"Sometimes, a scene works too perfectly," Younger says. "You have
time to try it another way. You’ve hit the three-pointer. Why not try a dunk?
If they nail it on the first take, why not try it differently? If it’s sad,
make it happy. If it’s happy, make it melancholy. Why not, if you have the
time?"

That’s what Younger did. The scene Younger wrote was to be played straight,
almost tragic. But it ended up comic.

"We explored that scene more than any other one we shot," he says. "We
did it on set, not during rehearsal. Take after take, starting one place, a very
serious read on how Lisa (Streep) tells Rafi, and how seriously Rafi reacts to
that, to the less serious and less serious. You see what feels good, and you take
it in that direction. And gradually, it became funnier and funnier and more and
more subtle.

"You don’t tell the actors, ‘That’s not working.’ You
just keep saying, ‘That’s great. Let’s try it another way.’

"That’s the nice thing about working with Meryl and Uma. You can make
that change without them thinking it’s some dramatic or scary event. They
go, `Oh yeah. You want to try it this way? Sure!’ A 180-degree turn in the
intention of the scene, how they play it and what it says, and it’s nothing
to them.

"The editing style of the movie is odd," Younger says. "People
ask me, ‘Why is your camera on people who aren’t talking so much? That’s
not the way it’s done. You watch the person talking.’ But I kept it
on the actress not talking because the reactions are better than the lines."